D3hoops Daily Dose

Well — we did it! What a roller-coaster season for our program, our team and myself. The 2008 NCAA Division III men’s basketball national champions are the Washington University in St. Louis Bears — now that’s got a nice ring to it.

The weekend in Salem was a very memorable one. It was a little different the second time around (after having been there a year ago) because we were a little more immune to the media, the large arena and the atmosphere. Last year we may have been a little in awe of the entire situation before having even played our games. This year it seemed as if the team had a much more businesslike attitude and was able to turn on the focus when we needed to turn it on.

The people of Salem, the NCAA, and the ODAC really run a great show out there. After arriving Wednesday, each team does some community service on Thursday before practices. We visited a V.A. hospital, which was very neat. Immediately following that we went to a luncheon to honor Troy Ruths for his Jostens Award acceptance. It was SO special for our entire team to be at the presentation. Following that we had a few hours of downtime at the hotel before heading back to the Civic Center for practice. We practiced, and then stayed at the Civic Center for the annual banquet that night with all the teams.

The banquet is an opening ceremonies-esque dinner and reception for all the student-athletes. It features a coach and player speaking representing each team in addition to a pretty neat highlight video about each team’s road to the final four — which definitely gets the players ready to compete. The ODAC commissioner, Brad Bankston, gave my blog a nice mention during his speech — so thanks Brad, and thanks for helping put together such a great experience in Salem.

Friday features a little more relaxation and prep for Friday night’s games. After a morning shoot-around, most of us relaxed around the hotel while watching the Division I games. In the hotel they have a “Student-Athlete Lounge” featuring a couple of big screen TVs, unlimited water, Gatorades and snacks, and PS3’s for all the athletes to use during the day. It’s a very nice touch that all the players greatly appreciate.

After all the hoopla, it was finally time to play some basketball. Hope was a very talented team and we knew that coming into the game. Having played them last year, we had a good feel for their style and it definitely benefited us. The first half was pretty back and forth, but in the second half our team put on one of the better shows I’ve ever seen. Scoring 57 points in a half against a very good defensive team was borderline ridiculous. It was the start to our nearly flawless three halves of basketball. Aaron Thompson took over for a big stretch and following his jabs, Troy had three-point play after three-point play to deliver the knockout punch.

Now had I been playing in the semifinal, bed time would’ve been in the immediate future following the game, however, I was a coach, and lucky for me — I was assigned Amherst on the Monday of the prior week as my team to scout going into the weekend, while one of our other assistant coaches took Ursinus. I had watched three of Amherst’s games on DVD in addition to their semifinal game picking up on their sets and play-calls, offensive and defensive tendencies, all in addition to some individual personnel scouting. So instead of going to sleep, I was up until after 2 a.m. in Coach Whittle’s room with my “scouting cap” on.

It was pretty neat that Amherst was the first scouting report I’ve been the one to actually hand-write the plays. It meant a lot the coaches trusted me to carry that load for the national championship game. I now know how truly frustrating it is for a coach to be calling out a play from the bench during a game while yelling and yelling to a player on the floor that a back-door is coming, but he still gets burned for a layup.

Anyway, Saturday night we played by far our best game of the season. We frustrated them with our defense and we hit shot after shot on offense. People can say maybe we got lucky shooting so well in the National Championship game — but the bottom line is we were taking GREAT shots, and that’s all you can ask for. As the final buzzer went off it was complete chaos and as I ran out to center court to celebrate and jump with my teammates my leg definitely did not feel hurt!

I can’t count how many friends, player’s parents, professors, etc., have come up to me and expressed congratulations but carried on to say how “bittersweet” it had to have been for me watching from the bench as opposed to being on the court.

The championship wasn’t bittersweet. It was really sweet.

This championship was the first for the program here and wasn’t won just by the six guys that played more than 10 minutes in Saturday night’s 22-point win. It was won by each one of the players that have been here during Coach Edwards’ 27 years. It was won by every fan that has ever come out to support the program. It was won by all the coaches that have ever put time in to making the program better. It was won by each player’s parents that have trusted to send their kid to the University. It was won by every sports information director we’ve ever had here, from people like Mike Wolf, the school’s first, that left his job at Northwestern for the weekend to come to Salem, to our current SID Chris Mitchell. It was won by people like Justin Carroll, the Dean of Students, Mark Wrighton, the chancellor here at Washington University, and our athletic director John Schael, for all the support they’ve given the program over the years. It was won by the three fan buses of students that traveled 24 hours on the weekend to get to Salem to get to the games.

Maybe I didn’t play minutes in the final game, but I still won that championship — and celebrating that wasn’t bittersweet, it was really sweet.

The after-party was fantastic at the hotel. I enjoyed talking with D3hoops.com posters Walzy31 and Marty Peretz about future business plans. I had a blast talking smack about the green-weenies to Titan Q and talking with Pat Coleman and D-Mac. We got to mingle with a few Ursinus parents and Amherst players and coaches, which added to the experience. But most of all it was just great to sit back with the coaches, my teammates and their families and enjoy what had just happened.

The entire experience was a ton of motivation for next year — to get back there and do it again. My first day freshman year at Wash U we had convocation, a welcoming with everyone in the class of 2009 and their families, in our Fieldhouse. Looking up at the four women’s basketball and eight women’s volleyball national championships, Tyler Nading, who I had known for less than 24 hours, and I made a pact that we’d hang our program’s first banner before we graduated. Well Tyler, we did it… Now let’s make it the first of many.

Take care,
Sean

P.S. Thank you to Pat for giving me the opportunity to blog this season. It has been both therapeutic and enjoyable. As for doing it again next season — a contract extension is still in the works and I’m not allowed to talk about it without my agent’s permission.

As the season went along we realized that we would have a chance to go far in the NCAA tournament but we decided to have a back up plan just in case. We, as in 7 upperclassmen on the team, thought that Cocoa Beach would be a good vacation spot. We found a huge beautiful house right on the beach. But once the NCAA tournament started we just all knew that our Cocoa Beach getaway was probably not going to happen. Of course going to the final four is way better then the beach. We really wanted to go to Michigan anyways

With the game coming to an end we knew our alternate spring break plans were not needed. Being able to go as far as we can in the NCAA tournament is what we have all dreamed about and have worked our butts off for. To be able to go to the Final Four is such a great chance especially since many people did not think we would make it this far! We feel so fortunate to be one of the four teams that are still in season. Michigan is going to be a great way to spend our Spring Break!

As I’ve been sitting out I have found that people, friends, or fans have approached me before and after games with two different attitudes. The first is the parent or fan saying “how sorry they feel for me”, “how much they wish I could be out on the court and can’t wait until next year” or asking me about rehab — all of which is very nice and greatly appreciated. Then there is the other fan… this fan, very rare, asks “in sitting out and spending time viewing the game from a different angle — what have you learned?”

Saturday night I learned more than I had all year.

We were miserable in the first half. We underestimated Millsaps’ athleticism and how tough they would make it for us to score.

We trailed 27-18 at halftime shooting 2-11 from 3, 26 percent from the field, while having five assists compared to our 11 turnovers. We were down nine and in a weird way I felt lucky we were only down that much considering how we played.

What does a coach do when his team is on the ropes, his season on the line and his players are starting to lose belief in themselves and each other? This is where I learned the lesson.

At halftime as the coaches met privately before going into meet with the players, Coach Edwards wasn’t frantically scrambling X’s and O’s trying to figure out a way for us to score. He wasn’t cursing out players for underperforming in a game where a trip back to Salem was on the line. Instead, he brought up a game six weeks ago at Skibo Gymnasium in Pittsburgh, Pa., against Carnegie Mellon.

Wait, Coach, that was the beginning of February against the fifth-place team in our conference in front of a generously stated 422 people — what on Earth does that have to do with playing against Millsaps (28-3) in front of a noisy WU Field House to get to the final four?

Well, we played Carnegie Mellon the Sunday morning after an epic overtime loss at Rochester. The game against Rochester was a draining, emotion filled, over-time effort which wore us down. With tired legs and exhausted minds, we sat in the locker room trailing Mellon by 10 at halftime — we shot the ball poorly, turned it over, and looked as sloppy as we did during the first half against Millsaps. After halftime, we let the wear take over our minds and got blown out. Losing 86-55 may have been generous as we were down 37 points in the second half.

Going into the locker room at halftime to talk with 15 players questioning themselves, Coach Edwards laid it out very clearly saying “We’ve been here before.” He reminded them of the Carnegie Mellon game. He said our draining game against Rochester was exactly like our strenuous game with Buena Vista the previous night. During the first half of tonight’s game not only were our legs tired, but our minds were tired. Instead of going out and playing a second half like we did against Carnegie Mellon (getting outscored 48-27), we had the opportunity to learn from the regular season and a chance to play a second-half and conquer the demons taking over our minds. We had 20 minutes to show how we had grown this season and learned from our experiences.

After halftime we were a different team. We had energy on both ends of the floor. We went on a 17-2 run to open the half and gave Millsaps fits with our defense. We took better care of the ball, for the most part, and hit a few timely shots while doing what we do best — getting it into Troy. I don’t know if it was exactly Coach’s comparison at halftime that turned it around, but it sure seemed like it.

Maybe he pointed out one or two small adjustments on a few plays during the locker room talk, but what I learned is that at this part of the season it isn’t about X’s and O’s — that’s what the entire regular season was for. As a coach and as a player I learned March is different. It’s really about mental coaching and both player’s and coaches being mentally strong enough to withstand the doubt that they can’t do it. Sure teams need to be prepared for what they’ll see from opposing teams and individuals, but a team’s mindset is truly what’s most important to its success. If we would have let the tiredness take over our minds I’m sure the Millsaps second half could’ve been similar to the second half at Carnegie Mellon — but Coach helped us realize if we stayed mentally strong, we could survive and advance to the Final Four.

Obviously I would rather be playing than sitting on the bench this upcoming weekend but I can’t tell you how excited I really am to go back to Salem. As a coach, player, or fan there is no better place to celebrate Division III Men’s Basketball. The people of Salem truly take pride in putting together a great weekend and making all participants feel special. Congratulations to all the teams that have made it this far, I look forward to watching some great basketball in the coming days. Please come introduce yourself in Salem, I look forward to soaking up this weekend and hopefully enjoying our program’s first ever (with a few more to come in the next couple years…?) National Championship.

Take care,
Sean

P.S. Congratulations to my buddy Troy on the Jostens Trophy. It is very well deserved and I couldn’t be happier for him. I couldn’t think of anyone that represents our program better on and off the court.

What a big weekend for the Washington University Bears! After losing an extremely emotional game at the University of Chicago just a week ago, it seemed as if there were a ton of reasons for us to question ourselves as a team. All of this before we saw our draw from hell released Monday afternoon by the NCAA. This isn’t me saying we didn’t deserve such a difficult path, as we were a Pool C team just thankful to get into the tournament, but rather how many tough teams there are in Division III in the Midwest.

The Weekend: Our opening game against No. 17 Wooster, a re-match of last years third place game, was a typical battle with each team throwing punches and making runs. We opened up extremely hot and ended up holding on to the lead for the entire game. In the second half, James Cooper showed why he’s an All-American and scored 12 of Wooster’s 14 points over a two-minute span to cut our lead from 10 to two. Aaron Thompson (A.T.) held him scoreless in the first half and did a tremendous job on him for the remainder of the game. Troy Ruths was too tough down the stretch (I feel like I’ve written that sentence multiple times in my blogs this year) and we ended up holding on for a five-point win.

Our second game was against No. 6 Augustana– a team that was very familiar to us. We played them earlier in the season, the first game after I got hurt, and they handled us pretty easily on a neutral court. Saturday night’s Augustana team was missing a key piece they had earlier in the season when they beat us, however, as they were without senior Jordan Delp, who went down earlier in the season with an Achilles injury. It was a pleasure getting to commiserate with Jordan about our respective injuries, rehab time-tables, and future plans as student-athletes.

While most basketball games feature teams making runs, Saturday night’s game was different in that respect. We almost never trailed the entire second half (with the exception of 21 seconds) but at the same time never held a lead of more than five points. Up two points with less than a second left, Tyler Nading got called for his fifth-foul and Chandlor Collins nailed two free-throws for them to send the game to overtime. Talk about ice-water in someone’s veins—those were some big time free throws. Without Tyler we still pulled together and played well in overtime. We got a huge lift from our bench throughout the game, add that to A.T.’s unbelievable effort running the show and Cameron Smith’s clutch shooting… oh yea, and Troy’s 21 points and seven rebounds, and what do you get? A three-point victory and a birth in the sweet 16.

Neither game was a dominant performance, but as the ESPN analysts and my high school coach say, that’s not what the tournament play is about… it’s about SURVIVING AND ADVANCING. Every team’s record is 0-0, and all that matters is that after the game one team is still playing and one team is going home. One team survived the game and is advancing to the next round and the other team is looking towards next season. Buena Vista (who we play Friday) doesn’t care that we beat two tremendously talented teams this past weekend, so we’re going to need to play our basketball and play it well to beat them.

UAA Unity: Congratulations to all of the UAA teams on their tourney success so far. I couldn’t be happier for each team that has advanced and I think that it has quieted any rumblings or complaints of people saying we didn’t deserve the three pool C bids we were granted—considering all three of the teams are still standing. I know each team has to win a game before it happens, but the potential Amherst vs. Brandeis match-up on a neutral court to get to Salem makes me giddy to think about. I haven’t seen the Lord Jeffs play this year, but the constant pressure ‘Deis puts on opposing guards by Kwame Graves-Fulgham and Andre Roberson makes it tough for anyone bringing the ball up, so it’ll be interesting to see how All-everything Andrew Olson does against that pressure the second time around.

NCAA Tourney Thoughts: I had an interesting conversation at Augustana with the NCAA representative this past weekend. Mike Zapolski, the athletic director at Anderson College, is the head of the Midwest Region and is a member of the national selection committee. While I can’t go through and repeat all of the conversation because it could potentially bore many, his enthusiasm about the regional ranking/selection process made me feel like the process is DEFINITELY in the hands of the right people. Obviously the committee is under very heavy scrutiny by the NCAA’s geographical/travel rules but it sure seems like he and the committee understand the tournament isn’t perfect at this point and there are definitely places to tweak things for next year.

Rehab: My rehab is continuing to go extremely well and I’m realistically only 3-4 weeks away from playing basketball in live, contact situations. I’ve been running, squatting, leg pressing and lunging. While I’m enjoying my role as a “coach”– helping putting together scouting reports late into the night with Coach Whittle, pointing things out on the bench, and listening to my teammates suggestions to tell the coaches, etc…—I can assure everyone that it is MUCH more fun to play!

Take Care,

Sean

p.s. Congrats to our S.I.D. Chris Mitchell on his recent engagement to University of Missouri-St. Louis S.I.D. Mary Ann Tierney! Talk about future kids with scary potential to become the best press release writers, media guide creators and web site updaters of the future S.I.D. generation.

Road trips are something that all student-athletes will experience, esp. athletes in the SCAC conference! We’ll take you through our most recent road trip to Crestview Hills, Ky:

Day 1:

We started out on Thursday morning at 830 am. By now our Thursday professors are used to the basketball team not being in class. The ride to Kentucky is pretty easy compared to our 10 hour drive up to
Conway, Arkansas for the SCAC tournament the weekend before. Everyone usually sleeps for the first few hours waking up to eat lunch. This trip has more excitement though because it is the NCAA tournament and we are playing a team that we had recently beaten by 19. To finally win a game in the big dance would be really exciting. To pass the time we watch a million movies. Since the boys do not travel with us they are mostly chick flicks. Now, I know what you’re thinking poor Coach Sattele he must be bored out of his mind but he should be used to that since he had 3 daughters! Movies don’t ever get old on road trips since we never have time to go see movies during the season. We also start preparing for
Piedmont, watch film etc… We arrive and the weather is fairly nice, little to our knowledge that was about to change. We practice at Thomas More then go back to the hotel, eat dinner, and sleep!

Day 2:

We wake up a little before 10 to get breakfast and get ready for shoot around. We look outside and what do we see? SNOW!! Snow in March?! Not just snow flurries, it is really snowing! There is few inches of snow on the ground! We go to shoot around. Afterwards we decide to bombard coach with snow balls. What were we thinking? Trying to win a snowball fight with Santa, that is pretty much impossible! Coach has really good aim and is a lot quicker than you think. So of course the freshmen are targeted. Our 6’ 2” center Reggie got a couple snow balls to the face and then fell into the snow! While the upper classmen know to throw a snowball or two and run onto the bus to get out of Santa’s range! We eat pregame and get ready to play.

We win!! We finally won a NCAA tournament game it is great!! We stay to watch the Thomas More(TM)-Greensboro game. Then we went to eat. Since we won winning we get to take an ice bath. Thomas More doesn’t have whirlpools so we have to put ice in the bath tubs at the hotel. We all pretty much dread doing this but the difference it makes in our legs is just amazing. We look over Thomas More then sleep.

Day 3:

There is 13 inches of snow on the ground and it is still snowing!!! The shot around is pushed back a few hours and the game was pushed back 30 minutes. Luckily it wasn’t pushed back until tomorrow, we don’t know if we could stand waiting another day to play. The day is filled with excitement. To make it to the sweet sixteen would be great! It is a great opportunity to play an undefeated #3 Thomas More. This should be a good game.

We win!! We beat the #3 team in the nation. This should show people that OU is not going anywhere. Both teams played great, I just do not think TM is used to playing our up tempo game. The atmosphere was amazing. That gym gets really loud and there were a lot of people there. Our parents and fans are just great! We go to Barley’s Corn for dinner. Most of the parents came with us to eat and we got our own room. Let me tell you it is not quiet for one second. All we could talk about was the game and that we are now in the sweet sixteen! We get back to the hotel and try to sleep.

Day: 4

We go to team breakfast at 8:30 am at Cracker Barrel. We are all pretty much just as excited as last night. Still wondering who we are going to play, the game got pushed back until 12 today so we won’t know who we’re playing for a while. The ride home is much easier if you win. During the ride home the game is always what is talked about and thought about. If you lose then the ride home is like torture, you just want to get home. If you win then the game is talked about excitedly in this case there is just a buzz on the bus. Most people sleep for the first hours but homework has to get done. Luckily the team is pretty diverse academically so if someone is having trouble in classes there is usually someone that can help. There is snow on the ground for the first few hours of trip, this is a long cry from our spring break plans of sand, water, and sun! We are about an hour and half away from OU. Most people were sleeping or watching the movie when all of the sudden our front tire blows out! We wake up to the bus heading towards the railing on the side of the road. Luckily we had a great driver who controlled the bus and no one got hurt. He steered the bus towards the closest exit and parked it in a gas station. After an hour the guy arrived and fixed the flat. It was pretty cool to watch the flat get fixed! We finally made it back to OU where fans and family had decorated the gym and made us cupcakes. It was great! We have really awesome fans! Now we have to get ready for William Smith and more cold weather!!!!

We are lucky to have our great fans! Our trainers came and really helped with our bumps and bruises. Hopefully we can have the same fan base in New Jersey.

Good Luck to all the teams! Until next time, try not to miss us too much!!